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Re: good books for sight reading

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2020-09-12 23:20

SunnyDaze wrote:

> I'm just starting out on Grade 4 and am finding that my memory
> for fingerings is letting me down.
> I keep forgetting which fingers are needed even among C4, D4
> and E4, which is a real bind when I'm also trying play complex
> dynamics and get up to D6.

IMO, practicing and eventually mastering the Klose daily studies (which include scales, arpeggios, etc.), and/or Baermann's rudiments or even the rudiments in the Rubank Advanced Method books (I and II) will reinforce the fingerings you're forgetting better than dedicated "sight-reading" exercises. For one thing, you're more likely to know when you've mis-fingered a note in a diatonic scale than in an unfamiliar melody. And you'll get around eventually to all the fingerings, not the sampling in whatever dedicated melodic exercises you sight-read.

> I have "improve your sight reading" by Paul Harris, and "A tune
> a day" books 1 & 2 and book of Christmas Carols that I can go
> back to. I just wondered if there are any other books that
> people would recommend?
>
Probably any intermediate method book that includes a lot of melodies would do. Look at the websites of publishers like Alfred Music Co. or Kjos that publish a lot of school music.

> I suppose I'm mainly looking for simple arrangements of well
> known tunes. (No dynamics, and not too much complicated timing,
> but lots of practice of fingerings.)

The problem with sight-reading "well-known tunes" is that you may not actually read them if you know them well enough by ear, which defeats their purpose as sight-reading material. You may be better off with unfamiliar but not over-difficult materials that you can't "cheat" with (meant in the most innocent sense possible).